Dear friends, it’s not us, it’s you. You are the problem. You’ve stopped sharing every intimate detail of your lives and we can’t monetise you as well as we’d like. So we’re changing our relationship to convince you to share more, so we can show you more ads.

Not an exact quote from Mark Zuckerberg, of course, but a rough translation.
In a statement released on January 12, the company’s founder announced new changes to the platform’s news feed that would prioritise posts from friends and family over content posted by news organisations and businesses.

News and other content will appear less in people’s newsfeeds, unless it is shared by users and widely commented on. The company also said it would amend its rankings to only show “quality news” – though it did not give details of what that might mean.

Advertising will not be affected – you will still be bombarded with ads whether you want them or not – and whether they are relevant to you or not.

Zuckerberg said the new changes were designed to make the platform better. “By focusing on bringing people closer together – whether it’s with family and friends, or around important moments in the world – we can help make sure that Facebook is time well spent,” he said in a post to the Facebook site.

But let’s be clear, the tech giant’s latest move to change its algorithm to
encourage more personal interaction is not about us – it’s about money.

Facebook has been worried for months about its “context collapse” problem. Users have become much more wary about posting personal details online and, as people’s newsfeeds fill with content produced by publishers and other influencers, audiences have become passive consumers rather than sharers.

Research from the US shows that adults spend about 50 minutes a day on the social networking giant – though reports suggest that this is decreasing. Facebook’s audience is also ageing, as – for some time now – younger users are turning to rivals such as Snapchat to share their lives.

Monetising audiences

Facebook’s business model is built around selling vast amounts of our data – highly sophisticated representations of our digital selves and our emotions – to advertisers. But increasingly Facebook users are posting links to third party websites – such as news and infotainment – and less about their personal lives.

The company has been working for some time to try to encourage more personal sharing. The “On this Day” feature, for example, was an effort to encourage users to share sentimental updates about themselves. There is no accounting for sentiment, though, as On That Day you might have lost a loved one or been sacked from your job.

Audiences have been seeing more reminders in their newsfeeds to reach out to friends on birthdays and special occasions, and more suggested posts prompting users to share their lives online. By accessing content on users’ phones, Facebook has also been trying to convince you to share more. Images you may have taken on your phone are included as suggested posts, for example. Facebook Live, similarly, has been heavily pushed to encourage personal sharing.

For nervous news publishers, this is ulcer territory. Many are worried they will see their traffic fall off a cliff in the coming weeks as Facebook effectively turns off the tap and all but removes their content from audience newsfeeds.

Chasing eyeballs

A small number of niche news brands that are making a significant return on investment from digital platforms have gone behind a paywall and, as a result, have kept an arms-length relationship with social media. Content is available to share, some content is free to read, but they are not as reliant on ad revenue from social media traffic.

But most of the rest of the news media has invested heavily in building up a Facebook presence – and in staffing and technology to support that social strategy. Desperate editors have been chasing audiences on social media, feeling secure in the hope that the millions of hits they were getting online from social media traffic would somehow translate into a viable business model. It hasn’t.

Instead it has strengthened Facebook’s position as gatekeeper, while adding hugely to the tech giant’s bottom line. Facebook, along with Google, enjoys a near monopoly position in the digital sphere, with an estimated 84% of the total online ad spending in 2017 going to the two companies.

Facebook operates with near impunity, highly protective of its all-important rankings algorithm. It has become the world’s biggest information sharing site, but can control at an individual level what two billion people see on their newsfeeds on a daily basis.

Democratic deficit

There is an overriding democratic concern here: Facebook effectively has the power to shut down news it doesn’t like. There is no suggestion it is doing so, but we should all be worried that this level of power is vested in one company.

Facebook’s latest move effectively means that if publishers want their content seen by audiences, they will have to pay Facebook via advertising – or negotiate new deals that will further erode their editorial independence, and enhance Facebook’s market dominance.

It does nothing to stop the spread of so-called “fake news” – in fact it ingrains the problem. While there is no silver bullet, Facebook’s efforts to date on fake news have so far been lamentable – as I have written here before. There is a real danger that the new ranking changes will exacerbate that problem.

Highly sharable content that attracts lots of debate and commentary – the kind that Facebook wants to encourage – may not be true, fair, balanced or accurate, and certainly may not be verified.

This is dangerous territory for news publishers. The “filter bubble” phenomenon, whereby audiences only ever see content that matches their preferences, will grow.

Worst of all, opposing views and important debates – the very serendipity of the newspaper itself – may be lost forever in the new social media world.

Fake news has become an important focus for news foundations, democratic interest groups and various journalism academics and researchers, following claims that the US presidential elections may have been influenced by anti-Clinton propaganda created by Russia and shared on social networks.

In recent weeks there has been a concerted effort by news organisations and social networks to combat the proliferation of so-called “fake news” online.

Facebook recently announced a three-day campaign to warn users in 14 countries about sharing content without knowing its origin. The notice: “Tips to Spot False News” advised users to be wary of headlines, to look closely at URLs and investigate the source of material before sharing it.

However Adam Mosseri, Facebook’s vice president of news feed, said there was “no silver bullet” to solve the problem.

The German government has proposed fining social media platforms and other digital publishers up to €50m if they fail to promptly remove fake news, hate speech and other illegal content. Google also recently updated a limited fact-checking tag to alert users about search results in its feed. Meanwhile the threat of far-right extremists trying to hijack the French election via social networks is being taken very seriously by media companies and social networks in France, who are working together to fact check news.

Seven degrees of fakery

But the problem with fake news is that the term has become a euphemism for everything from satire, to information shared out of context, to malicious content created with the intention of deceiving and potentially influencing public opinion.

It is even used by some – including the US president, Donald Trump – to describe news we just don’t like or disagree with.

Clare Wardle at First Draft News has created a “misinformation matrix” of seven types of mis and disinformation, ranking stories from poor journalism to content produced for profit, political influence or propaganda.

Claire Wardle’s ‘misinformation matrix’First Draft News

Some of the “fake” news shared on social networks is funny. But worryingly, there is a suspicion, even allegations, that malicious false news has been, and is being, created to “game” social media and search algorithms and influence public opinion, as is alleged to have happened in the run up to the US presidential elections.

News companies must bear some blame for being duped into believing their future success lay at the end of a social media rainbow. News companies desperate to survive have been consumed with metrics, producing increasingly generic content optimised for social sharing to reach ever greater audiences. But in doing so they have lost a vital connection with their audience. On social media, users are promiscuous and no longer connect the news they consume and share with the news companies that produced it in the first place.

Social networks and other algorithm-based aggregators had turned a blind eye to the problem, their algorithms rewarding “content” that drives engagement, rather than ranking on trust and truth. Investigations by Buzzfeed’s media editor Craig Silverman found that fake news companies were making significant revenue from traffic generated as a result of shares on social platforms and other aggregators.

More worryingly, though, the same “gaming” of the algorithms may be used for propaganda or to influence public opinion. And there lies the real threat of fake news. In a post-truth society, trust in institutions including the media has reached its nadir. But we trust our friends and families – and we trust what they share on social media, and are more influenced by it.

Whatever their editorial leaning, traditional news organisations – and the journalists that staffed them – had an overriding public interest function. Tech companies have no such lofty ideals. Even if Facebook itself would never attempt to influence public opinion via its timeline, the very fact that news that appears in timelines is based on algorithms is already a cause for concern, because algorithms can be gamed.

Algorithms rule, ok?

Now that they have been publicly embarrassed into taking action, the next step for tech companies and social networks in combating fake news will be based on algorithms pre-filtering content, rather than any overriding public interest or editorial decision making. But what if the Guardian runs an expose on a major shareholder in Facebook or The New York Times uncovers uncomfortable truths about a past or future relationship between a major social network and national security services? How will social media algorithms deal with stories like that? In an era where news is increasingly viewed via social networks, these networks are the new gatekeepers – and they hold all the keys.

If the public only ever gets to see content that has been pre-filtered, this will have serious implications for free speech and quality journalism – especially journalism that argues against prevailing viewpoints. Social networks will disintegrate into echo chambers where dissenting voices are drowned out in favour of news and opinion that chimes with a pre-filtered view based on the algorithm’s data about an individual user’s views of preferences.

No news organisation has ever commanded as much power to shape public opinion as Facebook – and yet its founder Mark Zuckerberg clings steadfastly to the mantra that the social network is not a media company, and so has no editorial function.

Digital literacy is part of the answer and Facebook’s latest foray was in part an attempt to alert audiences to be more sceptical about what they see and what they share. But in doing so, Facebook is abdicating its own responsibility to address the problem head on.

Zuckerberg’s claims are wearing thin. Until Facebook faces up to the reality that it has an editorial responsibility to its audience and to news organisations that help produce quality, trusted news, the problem will never be solved.

]]>https://tomfelle.com/2017/04/11/facebooks-fake-news-plan-is-doomed-to-failure-social-media-must-do-more-to-counter-disinformation/feed/0image-20170411-26730-1mexu4rtomfelleImage 20170411 26730 1mexu4rThe ConversationCan paywalls save journalism?https://tomfelle.com/2016/02/24/can-paywalls-save-journalism/
https://tomfelle.com/2016/02/24/can-paywalls-save-journalism/#respondWed, 24 Feb 2016 21:34:07 +0000http://tomfelle.com/?p=322The following is an article I wrote for The Conversation about newsonomics and the future of payment models for digital news. See the original article here

Journalism is in an existential crisis: revenue to news organisations has fallen off a cliff over the past decade and no clear business model is emerging to sustain news in the digital era. Some of the big news organisations are imposing paywalls on their websites, while others believe in free access to their content. In the latest in our series on business models for the news media, Tom Felle weighs up the pros and cons of paywalls.

There was a time, not so long ago, when newspaper presses may as well have been printing money. A combination of hefty advertising revenues and circulation growth saw huge profits flow into the coffers of owners and shareholders. But those days are long gone. The announcement that the UK’s Independent titles are to cease printing in March came as a surprise, but many with an eye on the newspaper industry had mused that it was not a question of if, but when, the Independent would go. Circulation had dropped to around 56,000 copies daily and print advertising rates remained in long-term decline.

The problem for newspapers – and their owners – is not that news has suddenly become unfashionable, it’s that making money out of news is proving increasingly difficult. The reasons for the collapse in profits are simple: for more than 100 years newspapers controlled the news and advertising markets, but digital technology has changed everything. Staples such as classified advertising, property and cars went quickly online. Newspapers were too slow to react to classified sites such as CraigsList and Gumtree – and lost the market.

At the same time titles have haemorrhaged circulation as news, once a prized commodity, is now freely available on a diversity of sites. Legacy news organisations initially gave everything away for free online, naively assuming their brands were invincible and that digital advertising would simply replace print loses. However digital revenues have proved elusive, and while online revenues are growing, the growth is nowhere near enough to offset the decline in print advertising and circulation.

ABC national circulation figures.ABC

Since the mid 2000s US and UK newspapers have lost close to 50% in circulation with few exceptions. Specialist titles, Sunday papers and broadsheets have fared slightly less badly than tabloids, but there is no good news for anyone in newsprint. While there are some examples, such as in Germany and Holland, where print circulation has held up relatively well, most titles are at best managing decline.

Paying for quality

Paywalls, introduced by a number of news companies in recent years in an effort to both put a value on the exclusive content they produced and to try to replace lost newspaper circulation, have worked to varying degrees.

A similar approach is in operation at The New York Times, though it has had more successes digitally in attracting paying subscribers and in converting print readers to sign up to seven-day delivery and online subscriptions. It now has more than a million digital subscribers.

News UK introduced a paywall for its news brands, including The Times and The Sunday Times in 2010, with The Sun following in 2013. While the strategy has been successful with 170,000 Times subscribers, the company abandoned The Sun’s paywall late in 2015, and announced plans to aggressively grow its digital platform in 2016.

The German media giant, Axel Springer, announced it was considering introducing paywalls at its Upday app and newly acquired Business Insider last December. It has already introduced a metered paywall at popular Berlin daily Bild and banned readers with adblockers installed on their PCs from accessing its content.

Dead giveaways

But while media companies are still making significant revenues from print, any revenue from digital, while impressive in growth terms, remains tiny. Digital revenues at The Sydney Morning Herald in 2014 were A$15m, compared with A$242m from print circulation and print advertising. Figures for 2015 from the Times Co (The New York Times parent company) show that digital subscriptions were responsible for just under US$49m of US$365m in revenue during the third quarter of 2015.

Print versus online revenue for US newspapers.Pew Research Center, CC BY

And not everyone has made a success of paywalls. Mid-market popular newspapers and tabloids, where a heady mix of “gotcha” journalism, crime stories, and celebrity and entertainment news have proved a recipe for huge popular success in the UK, have in most part steered away from paywalls – favouring instead high-volume mass market free content, with a heavy emphasis on content that plays well on social media.

Other sites, including the UK’s Guardian, have remained free, relying instead on revenue from digital advertising. However the rise of adblockers has severely damaged the ability of such news sites to make money from advertising. The Guardian reported losses of £53m in 2015and announced it would cut costs by 20%, blaming a sharp decline in print advertising and slower than expected growth in digital revenues.

For smaller players, the market remains challenging. Regional and local newspapers have little or no prospect of introducing successful paywall models. Economies of scale mean their potential audiences are too small to monetise via digital advertising. For now, most are clinging to their print editions (which remain profitable) and using websites to build brands and market share.

ABC1 readership newspapers – in other words, those appealing to the middle classes – and niche brands such as business titles, where content is exclusive and in demand, seem to be making paywalls work. For everyone else the future looks bleak.

]]>https://tomfelle.com/2016/02/24/can-paywalls-save-journalism/feed/0News Corp's New Tabloid The Sun On SundaytomfelleCity journalism academics make submission to Independent commission on FOIhttps://tomfelle.com/2015/11/24/city-journalism-academics-submission-to-independent-commission-on-foi/
https://tomfelle.com/2015/11/24/city-journalism-academics-submission-to-independent-commission-on-foi/#respondTue, 24 Nov 2015 17:08:06 +0000http://tomfelle.com/?p=310My colleagues at City University Professor Heather Brooke, Jonathan Hewett and I made a submission to the Independent Commission on Freedom of Information, the Whitehall body currently reviewing the FoI Act in the UK. Many are worried that the UK Government are about to fillet the legislation. I wrote a piece for the Press Gazettehere which warns about Ireland’s costly mistakes. You can read a copy of our submission below

]]>https://tomfelle.com/2015/11/24/city-journalism-academics-submission-to-independent-commission-on-foi/feed/0myhc_149809tomfelleWhy the UK should learn from Ireland’s costly mistakes on FOIhttps://tomfelle.com/2015/11/19/why-the-uk-should-learn-from-irelands-costly-mistakes-on-foi/
https://tomfelle.com/2015/11/19/why-the-uk-should-learn-from-irelands-costly-mistakes-on-foi/#respondThu, 19 Nov 2015 22:35:48 +0000http://tomfelle.com/?p=305Anyone wondering what Justice Secretary Michael Gove’s plans are for the UK Freedom of Information Act should look across the Irish Sea to see what’s in store.

Ireland introduced its FoI Act in 1997. In part it was introduced to move away from the culture of ‘official secrecy’ ­- a culture that bred scandal, corruption and cover-up. But it also came as part of a wider move to open up government, and to make public policy making accessible, transparent and accountable to citizens.

The law was enormously successful, exposing corrupt practices in local government; helping citizens better understand their rights; and uncovering abuse and poor standards of care in nursing homes, to name but a few of its successes.

However six years after its introduction, the then Irish government filleted the Act, exempted important documents, and introduced fees for requests. The result was that FoI requests fell off a cliff, and investigative journalists all but stopped using the Act.

In 2008 Ireland experienced the worst economic collapse in the history of world capitalism. A fiscal tsunami hit the country, property prices crashed and unemployment skyrocketed. Only an EU/IMF bailout prevented national bankruptcy.

In the many post mortems and investigations that have followed, it became clear that the then Irish government and economic and financial regulators were warned in internal memos about their economic policies, but the warnings never became public because journalists or the public couldn’t get access to them.

Last year the Irish reversed course and have reintroduced a powerful freedom of information regime.

A costly, but perhaps valuable lesson was learned by the Irish: frank advice, no matter how bitter, is welcome, and that advice is best heard in the open.

Government needs to hear all the advice before making important decisions and the public needs to be confident that those we vote to represent us in parliament (and in government) are making decisions in our best interest. The best way to ensure that is through accountability.

The UK’s FoI regime is in large measure a carbon copy of the Irish legislation, and the reasons it was introduced here are very similar.

Historically in the UK, an ordinary citizen had no ‘right to know’ – so for example hospital records, school inspection reports, restaurant hygiene ratings, council spending, and MPs expenses were all hidden from the public.

FoI has been a monumental success in opening up Britain’s public bodies, in large measure that has been led by the news media, in particular local newspapers.

However it is incredibly worrying to see that, like what happened in Ireland, the Government here now plans to fillet the Act.

A Commission is currently asking for submissions on improving the legislation, but few open government and transparency campaigners will have any have any faith in its findings.

The public interest test – which allows requesters access to documents on public interest grounds, and access to important internal memos that actually shed light on how government makes decisions, are all likely to be removed.

The Government veto, overturned by the Supreme Court to allow the release of the Prince Charles’ ‘Black Spider Memos’, is likely to be strengthened, meaning a government of the day could block access anything embarrassing from being released, regardless of whether it was in the public interest to release that information.

Most controversially however, fees for making requests may be introduced and the cost limits reduced.

The impact on investigative journalism will be chilling. A £10 fee may not mean much to a large law firm but for freelance journalists and local newspapers, it would mean the end of their campaigning and valuable investigative reporting.

And it’s not just journalists who would be impacted: ordinary citizens, and charities and NGOs interested in health or the environment, for example, may not be able to access information. In Ireland MPs complained they were unable to represent their constituents properly as they couldn’t get access to official records, or if they could they were charged exorbitant fees.

FoI is not a panacea for all ills. And not all governments and public officials are corrupt. What properly functioning freedom of information regimes offer is transparency, accountability, and an assurance of trust.

Himalayan incompetence in local authorities has been exposed; excessive spending by public bodies and by public figures has lead to financial savings; ordinary citizens have been able to access services they had been previously refused; the parents of dead children have been able to get some closure on their loss by being able to access medical records.

Sure, FoI can be difficult to administer, and it has created difficulties for public bodies, but in large part it has been a tremendous force for good and has transformed the relationship between citizen and the state in the UK.

The real problem with FoI in the UK is not how it is being used, but rather that the culture of official secrecy still persists.

In a truly functioning open government regime, FOI should hardly be necessary. Public bodies would proactively publish files – in the digital age at the stroke of a mouse click – and material not routinely published could simply be requested. 10 years after the legislation came into force in the UK, that hasn’t happened.

Rather than filleting the legislation, it should be expanded. The cost limits should be increased annually in line with inflation, and requesters should be able to make a case on public interest grounds to waive cost limits for important applications.

Public bodies should be encouraged to routinely publish far more information digitally in the public interest, in particular open data which is often hopelessly out of date when it is released.

Private companies who carry out pubic work should be covered under FOI laws. And the Information Commissioner’s office should take a far stronger lead in championing the culture of openness.

The Irish know how costly a closed FOI regime can be. Don’t let the same mistakes happen in the UK.

– Tom Felle is a lecturer at the Department of Journalism, City University London, and a former Irish Independent correspondent.

This article first appeared in the Press Gazette. Read the original here.

]]>https://tomfelle.com/2015/11/19/mapping-in-cartodb/feed/0687474703a2f2f692e696d6775722e636f6d2f6c334c32392e706e67tomfelleDull content, but the release of Prince Charles ‘Black Spider’ memos is a landmark momenthttps://tomfelle.com/2015/05/14/black-spider-memos-release-more-damp-squib-than-smoking-gun-but-release-is-important-none-the-less/
https://tomfelle.com/2015/05/14/black-spider-memos-release-more-damp-squib-than-smoking-gun-but-release-is-important-none-the-less/#respondThu, 14 May 2015 12:48:54 +0000http://tomfelle.wordpress.com/?p=294Tom Felle, City University London

After a decade of legal battles, the content of the infamous black spider memos – letters sent by Prince Charles to former government ministers – turned out to be a damp squib rather than the smoking gun we had hoped for.

But even if Charles seems preoccupied with fish, badgers and herbal remedies in his missives, the fact that these letters have been made public is extremely significant. The release of the 27 documents by the UK government – 14 letters from the Prince of Wales written in 2004 and 2005, ten replies, and three exchanges of correspondence between private secretaries – shows just how powerful the Freedom of Information Act has become.

The legislation, which celebrated its tenth birthday in 2015, is responsible for a transformational opening up of British bureaucracy. It turned on its head centuries-old presumption of official secrecy, solidified with official secrets legislation.

The legislation was directly responsible for exposing the large-scale abuse of expenses among British parliamentarians in 2009. The news that MPs had been making lavish claims at the cost of the taxpayer lead to an unprecedented loss of trust in their kind – and jail for several former politicians who made false claims.

While the scandal initially emerged when documents were leaked to the Daily Telegraph by an anonymous source, the material was being prepared for release under the Freedom of Information Act.

Fish, farmers and badgers

There are few such explosive allegations in the Charles letters. In many, he is vocal on issues he is known to be passionate about – architecture; the armed forces; agriculture; the environment; rural affairs; and protecting specific species, such as the Patagonian toothfish – much to the mirth of Twitter users.

Arguably his most interesting intervention is a letter raising concerns about the funding of equipment for the armed forces. As a future monarch, holding ranks of Admiral of the Fleet, Field Marshal and Marshal of the Royal Air Force, his intervention is meaningful.

In a letter dated September 8 2004 Charles wrote to the prime minister of his concerns that important “Oxbow” equipment, used in airborne surveillance, was not working properly because of problems with Lynx aircraft.

The procurement of a new aircraft to replace the Lynx is subject to further delays and uncertainty due to the significant pressure on the defence budget. I fear that this is just one more example of where our Armed Forces are being asked to do an extremely challenging job (particularly in Iraq) without the necessary resources.

By any standard, this can only be interpreted as an implied criticism of the government of the day, and of its support for the Armed Forces in particular during the Iraq war. That it comes directly from the Prince of Wales is all the more significant.

In another exchange with the prime minister, Charles raises concerns about excessive red tape for farmers, and complains about the Office of Fair Trading being overly restrictive on the growth of dairy coops. His comments on the delays in paying single farm payments to farmers – and the difficulties these delays have on rural dwellers.

In another letter dated 24 February, 2005, he raises concerns about bovine tuberculosis and the impact it was having on farmers. He criticises the “badger lobby” for objecting to managed culls of badgers, arguing that their opposition to such a proposal is “intellectually dishonest”.

Dear Tony

The release of private letters between the prince and Tony Blair are all the more ironic given the Blair government introduced the Freedom of Information Legislation – though Blair subsequently said that FoI was his worst mistake in government, describing himself as a “nincompoop” for introducing it.

In one telling letter, the prince notes he was putting his thoughts down on paper “despite the Freedom of Information Act” – confident that his private correspondence would never be released.

That really is the most important lesson in this case – and one in danger of being forgotten. When powerful figures think no one is looking, they do write letters like these.

The UK government is now talking about amending the Freedom of Information Act to give ministers more power to deny requests from the public for access to documents. That push back against openness is occurring worldwide – in the US the legislation is riddled with delays and costs; in Australia, the Information Commissioner’s Office was abolished by the government; and in Ireland fees were introduced to dissuade FoI requesters – though this decision was recently reversed.

FoI is not a panacea but it does offer a small guarantee of openness and transparency that powerful elites cannot hide behind. Any move by the British government to water that down would be regrettable.

]]>https://tomfelle.com/2015/05/14/black-spider-memos-release-more-damp-squib-than-smoking-gun-but-release-is-important-none-the-less/feed/051.526795 -0.09838151.526795-0.098381Prince_Charles_2012tomfelleThe ConversationHas the UK press lost its political punch?https://tomfelle.com/2015/05/07/has-the-uk-press-lost-its-political-punch/
https://tomfelle.com/2015/05/07/has-the-uk-press-lost-its-political-punch/#respondThu, 07 May 2015 11:45:27 +0000http://tomfelle.wordpress.com/?p=279On the eve of the UK’s 2015 general election, I spoke with Reuters about the highly partisan and bizarre media coverage of Britain’s 2015 Westminster campaign. you can watch it here:

]]>https://tomfelle.com/2015/05/07/has-the-uk-press-lost-its-political-punch/feed/051.507351 -0.12775851.507351-0.127758wordpresstomfelleCERuNkBWYAIa1k6CERtV0MWAAEX2WXCERuPLxWAAAitbyCERtX-aWIAEqZC8Did newspapers ever really influence elections?https://tomfelle.com/2015/04/27/did-newspapers-ever-really-influence-elections/
https://tomfelle.com/2015/04/27/did-newspapers-ever-really-influence-elections/#respondMon, 27 Apr 2015 19:07:20 +0000http://tomfelle.wordpress.com/?p=274There was a time when the first reviews of a play in a newspaper made or broke a touring company; when the exclusive first pictures were only available to newspapers and magazines; and when political coverage by the news media shaped public opinion.

Or at least, we think it did. But did newspapers ever really influence elections?

Political parties certainly have historically thought so, and had invested enormous resources into controlling the message during campaigns. We just have to think of Churchill’s infamous wartime propaganda the legendary Conservative 1979 ‘Labour Isn’t Working’ campaign, or Blair’s courting of The Sun in 1997.

Broadcasters are tightly regulated in the UK, unlike in the US where presidential campaigns revolve around TV advertising as much as shoe leather campaigning. In the 2012 election, for example, Obama spent more than US$1bn on his campaign, US$400m of which was on TV ad buys.

Newspapers in the UK have no such restrictions on editorial, and have all traditionally been partisan in their approach to politics.

In the last 70 years, Labour and the Conservatives have been in power for nine terms each. In all that time the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail have never supported Labour during elections, and the Daily Mirror has never supported any party except Labour. The Times have been broadly supportive of Conservative lead governments, except in 2001 and 2005, whereas the Guardian has been broadly supportive of Labour or Liberal Democrat governments in every campaign since the early 1950s.

There are two diverging views of the importance of newspapers in setting public opinion and influencing elections – the agenda setting view (newspapers set agendas and influence opinion) and the reinforcement view (papers tend to reinforce views their readers already hold) – and there are a myriad of studies which find that in some cases newspapers set the agenda, but in other cases newspapers are an echo chamber for the broadly shared views of readers.

For example, one 2010 study after the last election found that 59 per cent of Mirror voters voted Labour, with just 16 per cent voting Conservative. For Telegraph readers, 70 per cent voted Conservative, with just 7 per cent voting Labour. An important study in 1999 by the Centre for Research into Elections and Social Trends at the University of Oxford found that newspapers do have some influence on individual voters choices, but relatively little influence in the overall outcome of results, partly because of the highly partisan and non-homogenised nature of the British press.

So no newspaper can ever have claimed (despite what the Sun might say) that any of them ever ‘wot won it’ for any government. Newspaper readers tend to vote for parties that broadly represent their interests, in the same way they buy newspapers that broadly speak to their interests.

In the digital era, then, and at a time when newspaper circulation is rapidly declining, it is not surprising that all the political parties are investing heavily in social media campaigns in the run up to the May election.

All the parties know that in the relatively fertile ground of the online world, in particular social media, opportunities to influence potential voters are limitless. The 2008 and 2012 Obama campaigns heavily utilised social media (as well as digital resources such as big data to hone their message and to organise and mobilise their campaign teams). All the major UK parties are planning similar digital strategies for May’s general election. The parties know that with the growing influence of social networks, voters are as likely to take their cues from peer groups than from traditional news media. Newspaper readership is declining, as are television audiences – especially among younger viewers, and for news and current affairs. In the sharable world, peer-sharing of content is king. So will 2015 be the internet election? The BBC journalism Rory Cellan-Jones has claimed the predictions that 2010 was going to be the internet election were proven wrong. The Internet and social media were used by campaign teams to organise, and by readers as a source for news, but less than was expected.

Despite this, various surveys, including YouGov, showed that engagement and commentary by 18 to 24-year-olds occurred mainly on social networks. That cohort are an age bracket older now, and have been joined by a new group of young voters. About 24 million adults in the UK now use social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, with around 42 million people using the internet.

So if this is going to be the UK’s first digital first election, why are the parties still courting the press? There are many reasons and no clear-cut answers. The British media has always had a pack mentality, and tends to latch on to issues, so the agenda setting role still strong (we just have to think of the 2009 MPs’ expenses scandal as a case in point). But it’s also the case that in an election campaign where margins are won by inches, no party will be willing to take the chance and abandon newspapers altogether, even if their influence has dwindled significantly.

But the days of ‘It’s The Sun wot won it’ are over – even if the Sun doesn’t know it yet.

– A piece from City University’s election blog. See the original here: http://www.city.ac.uk/news/2015/april/newspapers-influence-election

]]>https://tomfelle.com/2015/04/27/did-newspapers-ever-really-influence-elections/feed/051.507351 -0.12775851.507351-0.127758Palace_of_Westminster,_London_-_Feb_2007tomfelleData journalism may be helping to solidify the divide between those who can afford to be in engaged in the political process and the resthttps://tomfelle.com/2015/02/17/data-journalism-may-be-helping-to-solidify-the-divide-between-those-who-can-afford-to-be-in-engaged-in-the-political-process-and-the-rest/
https://tomfelle.com/2015/02/17/data-journalism-may-be-helping-to-solidify-the-divide-between-those-who-can-afford-to-be-in-engaged-in-the-political-process-and-the-rest/#respondTue, 17 Feb 2015 22:53:14 +0000http://tomfelle.wordpress.com/?p=270Here’s an article I’ve written for the London School of Economics ‘Democratic Audit’ blog on data and engagement. The link to the original is below.

Many have welcomed the increased role of data journalism, praising its capacity to shed light on the cold hard facts which were often at the mercy of ideology and conjecture. But what role doesit play in fostering (or discouraging) citizen engagement? Tom Felle argues that it may in fact help to solidify the emerging gap between those who are already interested and engaged with political and public life, and those who are not.

The use of official statistics and data to report news is nothing new. Newspapers and broadcasting organisations have always reported on the latest official statistics from State agencies; business news has contained charts and graphs to visualise the financial stories of the day; editors have commonly used graphics to display rising house prices, or politicians’ expenses. Many of these stories have had data as their source. Reprinting a table of figures may be unintelligible for audiences, so journalists have traditionally acted as translators, and story tellers, taking the figures and reporting contemporaneously, analysing what they mean, and giving context to help audiences better understand them.

Computer assisted reporting or CAR as it became known was first used by the US television network CBS in 1952 to predict the outcome of the US presidential election. For more than 60 years journalists have compiled their own databases, or sought to use official data, when conducting investigations. Rather than simply report on what a government press releases said, or on ‘spin’ from private corporations, these reporters sought to independently verify facts and reveal truths, often using social science methods and rudimentary computers in order to do so.

A newer data reporting community has emerged with the advent of digital journalism within recent years. Greater and more powerful computers and software has allowed journalists to operate far more effectively in sourcing and investigating stories, where large and complex datasets can be mined and cross-referenced, often proving a rich source for news; and in telling stories. The development of application programme interface (API) access allows users to query and mine large and complex datasets. Visualisation software such as Tableau Public and geo-coding with Google Maps allows for far greater interactivity between the story and the audience, and therefore has the potential to increase public engagement with stories.

Increasingly, governments throughout the world have moved away from paper-based bureaucracy, and now hold far more information in electronic form. Access to large datasets is increasingly being made available as part of a general move across Western democracies toward more open access to government, and part of initiatives including the Open Government Partnership.

Journalists have always had key role to play as watchdogs on democracy and the emerging digital data journalism community has an important part to play in this regard, in reporting on and investigating what is being published; and to independently verify stories. The ‘fourth estate’ role is also heightened, as possibilities that data creates to tell important stories, allows for far more complex investigations using software to find connections. Previously these stories might not be reported fully, or may never be uncovered at all.

Research I’ve conducted finds evidence to suggest that digital data reporting is greatly enhancing the ability of the news media to report on digital government. Interviews conducted with data journalists working in newsrooms worldwide shows that journalists strongly view their role as a new method of conducting accountability journalism, and are using digital data reporting skills to do so. Evidence from articles published by news media organisations demonstrates this is also the case.

Engaging audiences in reporting on government and politics has also been enhanced by digital data journalism. The news media has traditionally sought to engage audiences through various methods such as letters to the editor pages and competitions for new writing. With the advent of social media such engagement – such as shares, likes and re-tweets – is a regularly measured and closely monitored metric for media organisations, and is widely considered a new form of engagement, since it didn’t exist a decade ago.

For media organisations that employ data teams, the research suggests interactive storytelling using visualisations, maps and graphics has increased reader engagement in storytelling. New tools have allowed reporters to interpret, contextualise, examine and analyse news in quite different ways. Newspapers and media organisations have used readers to help tell complex stories, such as National Public Radio (NPR) in the USA, and the Guardian in the UK, using crowd sourcing in various investigations.

However the level of engagement is not uniform. Most engagement occurs with stories that are directly relevant to audiences such as health and family issues; schools; personal finances and taxes; and local areas. Engagement is much lower when stories involve politics, political campaigns, spending and elections, except in Canada and Germany where politics engages audiences more than elsewhere.

However in order for journalism to be effective, it needs to have both an engaged, and a mass audience. There has been some criticism that data reporting is fast becoming an exclusive domain for the technologically literate, or data elites as scholars have termed them. Is digital data journalism really engaging mass audiences, and producing tools that people can use in the democratic process? Those most likely to read ‘red top’ tabloids in the UK are those most likely to be disengaged from politics, and among lower socioeconomic classes. Conversely, news organisations that have invested heavily in digital data reporting in the main include traditional ABC1 readership newspapers in the US, Canada, the UK and elsewhere such as The New York Times, the Globe and Mail, and the Guardian.

There is strong evidence that digital data journalism is being accessed in the main by those who are already engaged by virtue of the fact that news organisations who are publishing this type of journalism are in the main ABC1 circulation publications, or in the case of broadcasters are specialist broadcasters with niche audiences. Rather than acting as a watchdog on behalf of all citizens, evidence from my research suggests that data journalism is creating a wider gap between those that can afford to be engaged, and large tranches of society that are becoming completely disengaged from the wider political process, and effectively opting out of society.